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- More Americans are moving to Tuscany, a part of Italy known for medieval walled cities and wine.
- They're drawn by greater affordability, the charm of the local culture, and its relative safety.
- Some locals say it's keeping their economy alive, but others are starting to grumble.
Leanne Davis has always had a taste for wine.
The California native runs her own winery, Via Romano Vineyards, outside Sacramento. So it's perhaps little surprise that her love of the grape is leading her to her next home: Tuscany, the lush enclave in central Italy famed for its vine-covered hills and bushy olive trees.
A decade ago, Davis and her husband, Jon Chewning, fell in love with the region when they were married by the mayor of Montepulciano, a romantic hilltop town about an hour and a half from Florence, the regional capital.
Over the years, the couple returned, leading clients of their wine club on tours. Davis and Chewning were so enchanted that, in 2022, they spent $32,000 on a home in Boccheggiano, a medieval town about two hours northeast of Florence.
Davis and Chewning were already repeat customers in Boccheggiano, having co-purchased a $28,000 vacation home with friends there three years earlier. Now, they're planning to be fully settled in Tuscany by next year.
Courtesy of Leanne Davis
"It's got everything," Davis told Business Insider. "It's beautiful. It has fantastic wines, the landscape is just unbeatable. It almost looks like a painting." Most importantly, she added, "the people are so friendly."
The couple is part of a growing wave of Americans relocating to Tuscany for part or all of the year, trading their Bud Lights, hamburgers, and white picket fences for free-flowing local wine, platters of charcuterie and cheese, and stately villas that date back centuries.
Some, like Davis and Chewning, are moving because they prefer a slower-paced lifestyle full of food and beautiful vistas. Others are motivated by Tuscany's relative affordability, made even cheaper by a strong dollar — especially as the cost of living and retiring in the US has skyrocketed. It's also historic, art-filled, and objectively gorgeous.
Courtesy of Leanne Davis
"It just felt like it was basically living in a museum, an outdoor museum where everything has a story — every street, every bridge, every arch," said Georgette Jupe, a 39-year-old American communications consultant who moved back to Florence in September.
While Florence has long been the main port of call for American expats, real-estate agents and locals say more newcomers are pouring into smaller towns. On par with Boccheggiano or Montepulciano, where Davis and Chewning have ties, are the walled cities of Lucca and Siena.
The influx of Americans, locals said, can be at once a booster of fortunes and an irritating imposition. They bolster the property market: Home prices in Lucca went up 6% from 2021 to 2022, in part due to foreign investment, according to real-estate consulting firm Knight Frank. Americans hire property managers and caretakers; they spend money in stores, at bars, and in restaurants.
But some Italians worry about the outsize role Americans play, especially in Florence. Dozens of American universities have outposts in the city, attracting roughly 15,000 college students each year. American tourists love Florence, but their presence has consequences — like a sharp increase in the number of Airbnbs that the Associated Press reported makes it hard for local doctors to afford to live near the city center.
Other downsides to the region's popularity, some residents added, include being priced out by the deeper-pocketed newcomers, and more mundane concerns like traffic and crowds.
For many Americans, though, Tuscany remains a dream.
Davis said locals often assume she's on vacation. When she tells them that she owns a home in Boccheggiano, they're confused.
"They're like, 'Why would an American want to come and live in such a tiny town?'" she said. "When we tell them it's the quality of life or it's the slow pace or the people — or whatever — they just say, 'Oh, we've always dreamed of moving to California.'"
American interest in Tuscany is on the rise
Throughout the pandemic years, Americans have flocked to Europe, seeking more affordable lifestyles with more manageable paces.
Tuscany has its own charm. Relatively sequestered from the hustle and bustle of Rome or the crowded canals and alleyways of Venice, Tuscany's rise in 21st-century popular culture is often tied to Frances Mayer's 1996 memoir "Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy," about a woman who moves to Italy after a divorce, buys a dilapidated farmhouse, and finds love again.
Almost 30 years later, it's easy to see the region's continuing allure. Numbeo, a data provider that uses self-reported stats to track the cost of living worldwide, says it's nearly 20% cheaper to live in Italy than in the US, on average. Inflation has also risen at a slower clip, and average life expectancy is a few years longer.
Michele Capecchi, a lawyer in Florence who helps Americans secure Italian citizenship, opens his inbox every Monday morning to find about 150 new emails — roughly a third of which are from Americans seeking help in relocating to Italy.
"You read about Italy, and the sun, the culture. Of course, the bureaucracy doesn't help," Capecchi said. "But the standard of living, the cost of living — there are multiple factors that make Italy very attractive for a lot of people."
Americans can stay in Italy visa-free for up to 90 days. After that, non-residents need to obtain a permit of stay, according to the US Department of State.
Erin Lewis, an American yoga instructor who has lived in Italy full-time since 2015, currently lives near the Tuscan city of Chiusi. Lewis, 43, and her partner, whom she met in Italy, bought land and broke ground on a house in 2020.
"I had no Italian blood, but I just felt like somewhere deep down, maybe I was an Etruscan in a past life or something," said Lewis, referring to an ancient people who inhabited the area millennia ago. "I just felt totally at home and wanted to find a way back."
Courtesy of Erin Lewis
In recent years, more American friends of Lewis' have sought her advice about making the move to Italy themselves. Many are hoping to get away from America's tenuous political landscape and the plague of gun violence, she said.
The number of Americans registering to live in Italy is indeed rising, data show. It jumped from 3,951 in 2019 up to 6,813 in 2022 (the most recent year for which data is available) — a 42% increase in just four years, according to the Italian National Institute of Statistics. The number of Americans specifically calling the region of Tuscany home increased by 6% between 2019 and 2023, growing from 2,193 four years ago to 2,323 now, according to the institute's foreign census data.
Italian home-listing website Gate-away.com told BI that 29% of its inquiries in 2023 came from Americans. And 20% of those inquiries — the most of any region — were for properties in Tuscany.
Danilo Romolini, a specialist in Italian luxury home sales at Christie's International Real Estate, said that 40% of new requests he fields come from the US — a figure that's been on the rise during the pandemic years.
Emboldened by the dollar's recent strength, he added, some buyers are even confident enough to pull the trigger, sight-unseen. Recently, he sold a more than 4,000-square foot farmhouse with sweeping views of the Val di Chiana and a listing price of 1.6 million euros ($1.7 million) to an automobile-industry professional from Austin, Texas.
Locals' response to the influx of Americans is mixed
Luca Tudor runs AJ Tuscany, an upscale jewelry boutique on Montepulciano's steep main artery, Via di Gracciano nel Corso.
Tudor, who's called the region home since he was 12, says the arrival of so many Americans — a phenomenon that's become "bigger and bigger in the last two, three years" — is helping keep the ancient cities that dot the landscape from turning into ghost towns.
"A lot of people love what is called 'piazza life,'" Tudor, 33, explained, "which means getting into your own apartment and never taking the car again."
Sam D'Avanzo, a 29-year-old Florence native who owns a nightclub and concierge travel service in the city, said the influx of American residents has buoyed local lifestyle and entertainment businesses.
Americans may eat out as often as two or three times a week, he said, whereas Tuscans might only dine out a few times a month. In a typical meal, he added, Americans tend to spend 30% to 40% more on food and drink than Italian diners do.
Frank Bienewald/Getty Images
Some family friends of D'Avanzo's from Houston, Texas, recently bought a five-bedroom apartment in Florence's historic center, he said. Now they live there year-round.
Not all locals seem so enthused.
"For everyone who will say that international investors or people deciding to move their life here is a good thing for our economy, you will find someone there that says they are actually depriving Tuscany or local citizens of entire pieces of their city," Capecchi, the Italian lawyer, said.
One area where tensions appear to be running high is in schools, which have become so inundated with inquiries from foreign families that some have been relegated to waiting lists, Capecchi added.
In years past, many American families would come for a year or two to soak up Italian culture before moving home, but now some are staying longer.
At the International School of Florence, which has served Florence's English-speaking community since 1952, 27% of this year's class is made up of American students, versus 23% last year and fewer than 20% during pre-COVID times, according to the school's admissions office. In conversations with administrators, the admissions office added, parents often cite quality of life and alarm over US school safety as reasons they've made the move.
"We are reached by a lot of families who say, 'We're sick and tired of having our kids having to do shooting drills in the school,'" Capecchi said, adding that some families have likened attending US elementary schools with metal detectors to going to the airport.
In private Facebook groups for Italians, some locals vent about more cumbersome summertime traffic getting in pedestrians' way. "A lot of locals say that a place like Montepulciano cannot handle all those tourists because it's a small city," said Tudor, the jeweler.
Tourism alone, though, doesn't seem to account for the increase in Americans since pandemic lockdowns started to subside. In fact, tourism numbers haven't quite rebounded to pre-COVID levels, according to data from Federalberghi, an Italian hospitality industry trade association. In 2019, before the pandemic, Tuscany received 1.05 million tourists. In 2022, it welcomed 956,000 visitors.
Maremagnum/Getty Images
Some American residents who are staying for the long term seem aware of the effect they've having.
"A lot of locals have seen themselves priced out of rentals," said Jupe, who returned to Florence in 2023 after a three-year stint in Switzerland. She conceded that some locals struggle to find affordable properties to rent or buy: "There are so many people that want to live here. And so, of course, that can cause a bit of resentment."
Newcomers also bring new opportunities
Bendetta Ercolani, 31, lives in an apartment block in Montepulciano where she's the only Italian. One other resident is Albanian, she said, while the remaining two units are home to American families.
Her family owns a winery that has used traditional methods to produce their vintages for generations. But newcomers from the States have even local stalwarts like the Ercolanis contemplating new opportunities.
In 2021, Cantina Ercolani debuted its first sparkling wine. It was a decision partly influenced by Americans, Ercolani said, who were seeking a thirst quencher to cool off during sweltering Tuscan summers.
The sparkler is made entirely from Sangiovese grapes harvested on the family's land. At first, she said, Cantina Ercolani tested a production of about 3,000 bottles, and now it's scaling up, with another 5,000 on the way.
Americans, Ercolani said, "spend money and they appreciate the quality of the food and the wine that we have."
"Tuscany," she added, is "like a brand."
from All Content from Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/tuscany-americans-moving-italy-cost-of-living-slow-pace-2024-3
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